


One Day (Like Any Other)

by Aubry



Category: Black Books
Genre: David Nicholls, Friendship, Gen, Pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:04:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aubry/pseuds/Aubry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forty years, two people, two hundred and eight bottles of wine, ONE DAY...</p><p>17th March, 1996. Bernard Black and Fran Katzenjammer meet for the first time on St Patrick's Day - on the run from a ghastly Irish theme pub. The next day they don't quite manage to go their separate ways.</p><p>So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year which follows?</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Day (Like Any Other)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morganya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/gifts).



> For morganya. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. And that at least some of this hits the spot. 
> 
> This story is a riff on David Nicholl's novel '[One Day](http://www.davidnichollswriter.com/one_day)', which was also made into a movie with Anne Hathaway. Reading the book is in no way mandatory for understanding this story. I merely ripped off the premise, the blurb, and the opening lines. Then I recast a story of growth, angst and self-discovery with two of the most blissfully unrepentant misanthropes ever imagined.

 

 

 

 

** One Day (Like Any Other)**

 

 

 

‘I can imagine you at forty,’ she said, a hint of malice in her voice. ‘I can picture it right now.’  
He smiled without opening his eyes. ‘Go on then.’  
 _- **David Nicholls,**_ **One Day**

"You know, Bernard. I can picture you in forty years. Still sitting here in the remnants of your own dinner with Manny pouring wine into you through a funnel because you're so lazy you can't even be bothered to lift your arms," she said, her voice slightly muffled between 'remnants' and 'funnel' as she pulled a recalcitrant cork free with her teeth. "I can picture it right now. Top up?"

He finished what was left of his drink in one gulp and then held out his glass for a refill without opening his eyes. "Go on then."

* * *

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 1996**

It was one of those diddly-eye pubs with misspelled Irish scrawled on the walls. Bernard was going to get the hell out of it - and possibly out of London with its shower of half-saved savages - as soon as he could navigate his way vertical again. The woman sitting beside him had a laugh like a braying donkey after being hit with a train. If he killed her in this throng would anyone notice?

Right. Hands on table. Push up.

The room swam more clearly into view. A sodden coaster slowly peeled away from the side of his face and fell with a clatter next to his army of empty glasses. It said “Erin go Brach”. Wretched.

His mind was made up.

“Right,” he said to the woman next to him. “Come on. We're going.”

She looked at him like he had two heads. Which – to be fair – he felt could possibly be the case.

“What? Are you talking to me? I don't even know you!”

Bernard frowned at her, tried to process what she was saying, decided he couldn't be bothered.

“Come or stay then. Suit yourself. I don't care.”

Sidling out from the corner he accidentally stepped on somebody's foot. Then he intentionally trod on three or four more in a kind of general retaliation against the looped Pogues music in the bar. _I'm the sprightly Celtic leprechaun of Karma_ , he thought sourly.

The night air was bracing. London's swirling March mist was backlit by city lights and entirely unlike a spring shower back home– and thank Christ for that.

“So where are we going then?” asked the donkey-voiced woman who had followed him after all.

\---

He took her to a bookshop.

“Is this yours?”

“Yeah, apparently.”

Fran looked around the dim room. From floor to ceiling cases full of books were arranged with pristine neatness. Street light spilling through the window hit a display table that was so highly polished it gleamed. It all seemed deeply at odds with the scruffy Irish man who had led her here. Worse luck, it looked deeply inauspicious for either good booze or good sex. Or any kind of booze or sex at all, really.

“I inherited it today,” Bernard continued. His words were slightly slurred and he stumbled as he looked for the light switch. She hadn't yet decided if he was very drunk, or just never opened his mouth properly when he talked. “The previous owner died of a heart attack over in Victorian First Editions, which seems deeply suspect if you ask me. Who dies of Hardy? Nobody. Nobody that's who. Whom.”

“Oh, I am sorry,” she replied in hope that this was the right response. “Was he a relative?”

“What? No. I never met him before. I came in to browse while he was making his will. He didn't like his family or something. I only got off the boat this morning; I thought that was just the kind of thing that happened in London.”

Fran was only half listening. She'd found a desk lamp at the back of the shop. And more besides.

“There's a coffin back here!”

And there was. A solid, serious, mahogany affair. It cast sinister shadows in the light of the reading lamp. Propped against it was a battered suitcase and a rucksack.

“Yeah. They're going to remove him tomorrow or something. I don't know. Stop asking me questions.”

The rucksack turned out to be full of beer. (His luggage.) The gold handles of the coffin turned out to make a decent bottle opener. (Her discovery.) Fran thought about leaving – maybe even telling the police about Vincent O'Price here, holed up with a corpse and a passport he appeared to have made himself. But to hell with it – she'd had worse nights out in her life. To be honest, she'd had worse nights out that week.

And that was the first night that Fran Katzenjammer met Bernard Black.

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 1997**

“Excuse me? Excuse me, Mr Extremely Large Bouncer. Is Fran here? Fran! Fraan! Fran! Fran! Fran!”

He'd been kicked out of four dreadful Oirish pubs already. He was fairly sure that this was at least the right part of the city, though, because he had vague memories of taunting a man in a Guinness hat under that fancy clock thing before getting sick in the gutter. That had to have been this day last year, right? Or had that been one of those Spanish tour groups in the summer? It was far from inevitable that he would strike gold eventually. But this time he did.

“Who keeps screaming at me?”

A tall, dark-haired woman came to the door of the pub. That could be her, he thought. Mind you, he'd thought the same of the little fat red-haired woman in the last place.

“Bernard? Is that you?”

She recognised him, so that put the odds higher.

“I'm sorry that I stopped writing,” he hazarded.

“You never wrote at all,” she pointed out. “You called twice. The first time you stood me up, and the second time you thought I was a Chinese restaurant.”

Behind her the bouncer took his position again. Bernard knew that stance of old. The man had let Fran out to talk to her friend, but buggered if either of them were getting back in again. And Fran without a coat. He considered his own wool coat, layered over a warm jacket. She was going to be cold, he thought and then smiled at his own toasty-warm fingers in his pockets.

“What are you laughing at? Look, leave me alone you... weird little Irish psycho.” She turned to go back into the pub and bumped into the solid wall of doorman.

“Here's the thing,” said Bernard quickly. “I'm bored. I have money from some fool who wants leather-clad books for his pretentious intellectually-impoverished old library. I'm sorry I never wrote. C'mon and have a drink with me.”

Fran tried to eyeball the bouncer for another minute before giving up.

“Fine. You're buying,” she stomped off ahead of him towards the next pub. “How did you find me, anyway?”

Bernard shrugged. “You struck me as a creature of habit.”

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 1998**

 

“Fran? Hi, how are you? Listen, you know that tenner you borrowed last week? What? Oh well – borrowed, lent, what's the difference really? Anyway, the thing is I need you to come and pay my bail.”

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 1999**

 

They'd been drinking-acquaintance-type-things for four years and shared hundreds of bottles of wine and a prison cell before Bernard came to appreciate one of Fran's truly great qualities. Fran was the grand master of heckling buskers. She could wither a long-haired yob playing _Stairway to Heaven_ at a hundred paces. She'd taken on those new eejits who thought painting themselves gold and standing still was a marketable talent with a vicious and gleeful enthusiasm. One of them had cried – actually sobbed and apologised before taking his bucket and running.

Now Bernard could only stand back and watch with that sort of choked feeling he sometimes got with Rachmaninov or Tolstoy. This ponce in his shamrock hat hadn't stood a chance. He was already wringing his fake beard between his hands and scanning the scene for an exit before Fran had even really gotten started on his probable lack of sexual experience.

When he finally made a break for it and ducked under one of her arms during a particularly expressive gesticulation, Fran was grinning like a cat. Her eyes sparkled with exhilaration and also vodka probably.

“Well that was fun. What's next?” she asked. Bernard kissed her clumsily. He grasped her hand and led her, weaving slightly, back towards the lights of Black Books.

\---

Bernard seldom kept a diary. He'd start one now and again, because it was a crying sin that the rest of the world was too hopelessly moronic to appreciate the poetry of his soul and so he thought it ought to be saved for a more enlightened posterity. But at the end of the day, who could really be bothered? He did sometimes scribble notes and thoughts on the pages of his wall calendar, though. Sometimes even on the right month. He had in fact been using the proper March page in 1999 since at least the eleventh.

Fran stood with his ear pinched savagely between her finger and thumb, watching him as he set the page alight and burned any record of the month ever having existed.

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2000**

 

“Bernard, Manny – let's go out. It's boring in here just watching you two snipe at each other.”

“No. I never go out on St Patrick's Day. I hate St Patrick's Day. It's a gross and offensive stereotype.”

“Aw, come on Bernard. Fran's right. It might be fun. There's this great new jazz place just opened around the corner, apparently. Good food, good wine, charming ambience. It'll be great.”

“No! I never go out on St Patrick's Day. It's a long-standing tradition of mine. We're going to stay in here and have cultured conversation between friends. Now give me those Monster Munch. They're not good for you, and I'm hungry.”

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2001**

“Manny? Is that you? Listen. No, shut u– yes, Fran is with me. Shut up and listen. There's a Milk Tray box in the bottom drawer of the thing. What? The thing. The thing with the drawers in it. Right – now there should be an envelope in there marked 'bail money'. I need you to put some money in the envelope and come down here.”

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2002**

 

Dear Moo-Ma

Greetings from Dublin! Having a lovely time here – Bernard's showing us all the sights, and Fran has really taken to the local hostelries. Our hotel will certainly be lovely when it's finished. Please tell Moo-Pa not to worry at all about anything if he should happen to catch a glimpse of me on the evening news or something like that. I'll explain everything when I get home. You'll laugh when I tell you.

Love,

Manny

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2003**

 

“Bernard, why don't we go out tonight? It's so boring in here.”

“No. St Patrick's Day is a stupid excuse for animalistic behaviour, and I want no part of it.”

“You say that every year! Oh come on, Bernard. You're turning into a right old spoil sport. Tell him, Manny!”

“Don't you dare tell me anything, Manny. You're not to be taking the side of this wine-soaked shrew. Now go into that kitchen and make me some dinner. I want an omelette. And don't put any mushrooms on Fran's.”

 

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2004**

 

“Look,” said Bernard. “I don't see why we should arbitrarily be expected to make extra fuss just because somebody has arbitrarily decreed that it's a special day. It's pointless.”

“Stop arbitrarily-ing me,” said Fran. “And it's not pointless. What about birthdays. Or anniversaries. Or Christmas?”

“Pointless. Pointless. Trebly pointless!” he replied.

“Actually, Bernard,” Manny interrupted, “Annual recognition of important events in symbolic ceremony has been a mainstay of the human psyche since days immemorial. Such conscious recognition of our cyclical lives sets us apart from the animal kingdom and is the foundation of much of our culture. Indeed, Julia Kristeva-”

“Oh, don't waste your breath, Manny,” said Fran. “Not when he's in this mood.”

“Yes, Manny,” said Bernard. “There'll be no feminist philosophy in this shop today. Fran can't keep up.” He smirked at her.

Manny ploughed on with a certain earnest obliviousness, ignoring the death glares shooting between his friends. “No, but think about it. A day of reflection once a year is very important. Imagine if you could trace the lives of people and their relationships just checking in once a year to see how they'd changed – a sort of palimpsest of personal growth. Seeing how much people alter without realising. I think that might make a good novel, actually. A man. A woman. One day - “

“Manny,” Bernard cut him off. “It would not make a good novel. It's a ridiculous, lazy, contrived notion of exactly the sort I'd expect from an imbecile like you. Get my coat – I'm going out for a drink. The pair of you can come or stay. Suit yourselves. I don't care.”

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2005**

 

2005 was the year that Bernard embraced his inner feminist. Sort of.

Bernard woke up with what he thought of as a Gregor Samsa hangover. Everything seemed fine until you tried to roll over off your back. Fran was snoring gently on the couch. And was that Manny's hair sticking out from behind the counter? That was everyone accounted for then.

Except Bernard. Where was Bernard?

The next time he woke up Manny hadn't moved from the floor, but Bernard was there now too, so that was all right.

He struggled to his feet to find Fran gazing at him blearily.

“Fran, what colour is it?” he asked

“What?”

“What page is it? No – day. What day is it?”

Fran hauled herself up and staggered to the window to peer out at the chalkboard of the cafe across the street.

“March 17th,” she reported.

They looked at each other for a minute trying to remember why that was important. Fran got there first.

“Bernard. Bernard we did it – forty-five days! Manny, wake up.”

It took a moment to bring Manny around, and then another ten to remind him of who he was, where he was, who was Prime Minister (Bernard didn't know either, but then he didn't know that even when he was sober), what day it was, and why that was important.

“We did it? We did it! Hurrah!”

As Manny and Fran watched, Bernard struck a proud oratorial pose.

“They said it couldn't be done! They said I was a madman! Well now I ask of you this - is it madness to believe in equal treatment for my nation's gentler patron saint? My friends, mark this day! From St Brigid's Day to St Patrick's Day we have tippled of the... tipple each night and thus made reparation for a great gender imbalance. We have done this, and we have survived. And now we may sally forth and unveil Anti-Lent to the masses!”

“I need a coffee,” said Fran.

“Let me make you breakfast! Full English Breakfast! All the trimmings. Hold on there, be right back, just you hold on!” Manny offered in a single breath.

They heard him banging pots and pans in the kitchen as delectable smells began to emerge. Then, ominously, all sound ceased.

“Er, Fran? Bernard? Can anyone remember how to _stop_ making mimosas?”

 

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2010**

 

“No! You cannot go. I forbid it. I disallow it. Banish the idea from your mind.”

Fran gazed at her friend sadly.

“Bernard, this is a really good opportunity for me. I can try new things, meet new people.”

“You don't need to meet new people,” said Bernard. “You hate new people. You've got me and Manny. That's a world of experience unto itself.”

She caught him under the chin and forced him to look her in the eye.

“Manny's been gone for ages, Bernard.”

“He'll be back soon,”replied Bernard stubbornly. “His parents are both old. They'll be dead any day now.”

“You know, you might consider visiting your own mother some day,” she suggested.

Bernard just stared at her. Then he seemed to deflate and flopped back into his chair with the languor of a Pre-Raphaelite.

“You're really going this time, aren't you?” he asked.

Fran nodded sadly.

“We can still go out for a drink tonight,” she said.

Bernard stared at her for another minute then seemed to come to a decision. He sprang to his feet and pulled on his coat and scarf.

“All right, everyone. Get out. We're closed.”

He shooed an elderly woman and a young German student towards the door and gestured for Fran to follow. She began to turn out the lights and pull the blind.

“Wait. Hang on a second,” Bernard pulled up short at the threshold. He grabbed hold of the German student's anorak just as it disappeared out the door and pulled him back in. “Hey, you! Do you want to own a bookshop?”

\---

2010 was the year Bernard sold the shop. These things happen. Fran helped them to move their things out at the end of March. She and Manny both helped Bernard to move again on the third of April after an altercation with a landlady. They moved him out of Fran's new flat for the fourth and final time in October and saw him safely onto the Irish ferry.

“Should we have explained to him about the Euro, do you think?” asked Fran as the ship pulled out.

“Nah. He'll figure it out,” said Manny. “We can hear all his rantings about it when he comes back.”

“Without doubt,” she agreed.

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2015**

 

“Bernard, where the hell are you? You sound like you're at the bottom of a well! Oh. Well why are you at – actually, never mind. I don't want to know. Listen, call Manny all right? You've done that thing where you've forgotten to return any calls for months again, and you know how he gets. No I won't tell him. Ring him and tell him yourself. And hurry up and RSVP about June. If you don't come I'll kill you... What country are you even in right now?”

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2020**

 

Dear Fran,

Thank you for your letter of the 12th. Sorry for the delay in replying. I thought it best to wait until Bernard had gone home to keep him from editorialising. You know how he gets.

Business is really booming here. In fact, we cleared our first million-pound month in January! I'm not actually seeing much in the way of physical profits myself yet, but my accountant Jeremy says that's entirely to be expected. So fingers crossed for the future! Soon there'll be a Bianco in every household in the developed world. Bernard got quite insulting when I told him that, but I know he didn't mean it.

Looking forward to seeing you in the summer. Or before Christmas at the very latest. Love to the family,

Manny.

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2025**

 

Bernard had to push quite hard on his pencil to make it write on both sides of the postcard, but this was important business. He'd deal with the cramp, because that was the kind of friend he was.

Fran (he wrote),

Manny the mountain man told me about what happened with what's his face. He's a despicable arse and you're well rid. As you know, I am a non-violent person-

The tip of the pencil broke. Bernard rooted around hopelessly for another in his pocket and found only a roll of slightly manky sellotape and his wallet. The wallet was empty of money, but full of old library cards, train tickets, coffee shop loyalty cards (fickleness cards really in Bernard's case) and business cards from people he didn't know. Including, now that he looked, the business card of the utter bastard who had just walked out on Fran.

He looked at the card, with the fiend's full address printed on it. He looked at the stamps he'd bought by the handful to be sure of getting the postcard to Fran. He looked at the sellotape. He looked at his lunch - a prawn salad parcelled up in cardboard and already smelling a little peaky in the hot Meditteranean sun. 

Really, he thought, it was a message from the Fates. It would be wrong _not_ to do it.

**St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2035**

 

"Mum! There's some old drunken bum at the door for you!"

Before Fran could ask for any further details she heard a familiar voice echoing in the front hall. 

"Fran! Fran! Fraaan!"

"Oh my God. Bernard!" 

She flew past her concerned yet resigned looking daughter and threw her arms around him. It took her a minute to notice he wasn't alone. Her grin widened.

"I'm going out for a drink!" she called over her shoulder. "Don't wait up."

"I never do," came a reply that was cut short as Fran slammed the door.

\---

The three of them sat at a corner table in Fran's local. 

"It's so good to see you both again," she gushed. "Gosh - when's the last time we were all three together?"

"Minsk," said Manny.

"Oh yeah."

For a moment they all fell into a brooding silence.

"Have you heard from Jeremy since?" Fran asked.

"I think he owns the Dallas Cowboys now," said Manny.

The awkward silence threatened again, until Fran banished it with considerable determination.

"But never mind that! Let's get in some Champagne and really celebrate the day that's in it! It seems quite fitting that we'd meet up again today."

Bernard looked at her a little blankly. "What's special about today?"

"Well, it's St Patrick's Day."

"Did we used to have a thing with St Patrick's Day?" asked Bernard skeptically.

Fran was stumped.

"Didn't we go to Ireland one year?" asked Manny, clearly racking his brains.

Bernard waved a dismissive hand.

"I go to Ireland all the time. It's all just old churches and ham sandwiches. Nevermind all that. I've got some real news we can celebrate, Fran."

"What's that?"

"I've bought a bookshop," he explained. "In Bloomsbury. Manny's going to help me run it."

 

****St Patrick's Day, March 17 th 2036** **

 

Bernard pushed an unruly lock of hair back of his forehead. It was all silver now, but – he thought somewhat proudly – no less full of dandruff. On the bench across from him, Fran grinned back. Her eyes looked owlish behind her glasses, but they were the same eyes he felt he'd know all his life. Next to her, Manny was still trying to untangle the liquorice from his waist-length beard.

Everything was right with the world. It was just like old times.

Well – almost like old times.

Bernard frowned as he realised that they really did have one brand new problem. In all there years, how had this never come up before?

“It's so wonderful that we're all here together,” he said. “But who the hell are we meant to call for bail money now?”

 


End file.
